Monday, March 31, 2008

As you might know, we have added some new features on Monday each week. This week we have a stamping tutorial by designer Linda Beeson. Linda gives us some insight on how she created her beautiful card this week using the stamps from Gina K Designs.

I imagine the most common color of stamp pad a stamper reaches for when thinking about stamping is probably a black one. There are so many colors available though and so for the Gina K stamps the Design Team is using this week, I wanted to start with something a little different, a color that would more match the color of papers that I planned for my card.I chose to use a Colorbox Pigment pad in Teal. I decided to stamp the image of this flower on white cardstock and then I can cut it out and make it part of my card. If I had stamped the image directly on my background paper it would have made it harder to color in the image. I picked the PIGMENT type of stamp pad for two reasons. One, these pads come in a huge variety of colors and TWO, the pigment pads make embossing easier because the ink stays wet for awhile giving you time to pour on the embossing powder. When you use colored stamp pads like this, all you need is a bottle of CLEAR embossing powder. I wanted to emboss this image because that just adds a little bit of intensity to the image.The Gina K stamps are rubber and come in a block of images so all you need to do is cut apart the designs. The rubber is backed with a material that allows it to CLING to an acrylic block, all you do is peel off the paper backing. Each set of designs come in an adorable tin with an index sticker on the outside to remind you what is in each tin, making storage so easy.I cut out the flower that I wanted to use for this project and attached it to the acrylic block. I like the Cats Eye size of the stamp pads, so I took the pad in my hand and applied ink to the image by tapping the stamp pad to the image. I will often do an experiment stamping first on a scrap piece of paper to make sure I have it inked well and it is stamping properly. I then inked it again and stamped it on my piece of white cardstock. I now poured on the clear embossing powder and poured off the excess powder, putting it back in the jar it came in. I could now use a heat gun to finish the embossing process.

I wanted to color in my image with watercolor crayons. Markers could be used for this part as well as watercolor pencils or colored pencils. I really like the way these watercolor crayons work and the amount of color I get, yet it gives a subtle look. I always use a watercolor brush for this part. What I really like about the watercolor brush that I use most often is it has a barrel attached to it that holds the water supply so you don't even need to get a glass of water. The crayons can be used in a couple different ways, I like to brush the wet, tip of the brush along the tip of the crayon that I want to use. This allows me to "pick up" color. I can keep adding color to the portion of the image I am coloring and I can easily change colors. All you do with this brush is "brush off" the color you have on it on a scrap piece of paper. The tip comes very clean, making it ready for the next color. For both the flower piece and the leaves, I used a few different shades of the colors until I got the look I wanted. When this was dry, I cut out the flower.

When I was stamping and embossing my original image, I did two of them. I wanted to be able to have an extra flower and some extra leaves. I glued my complete colored image to the card front of my card. I can now add the extra pieces to the original image with foam tape. It just adds a bit of interest to have the 3-D element to this simple design.

This set of stamps comes with several great words to use for the greeting. I wanted to use the word "Hope" and I wanted it to be white. I used a white Colorbox pigment stamp pad to ink the word "Hope" and stamped it on my background. I also used white embossing powder on the image. I didn't need to emboss it because it looked good with just the white ink, but the white embossing powder adds a little more intensity to the word and it does add a little bit of dimension.

Friday, March 28, 2008

WOW!!! We have had soooo much response for this last sketch! You (our readers) have really outdone yourself this week! I haven't had time to comment on them all but let me tell you, the ones I say were just GREAT!!! Have fun looking at so many other peoples take on CPS57!

Keri is on vacation and I'm a day late :P Sorry for the delay. Don't forget to leave a link to the post or gallery image of your card. All links posted in the comments of this post or any post this week will be added to next week's reader update.

Tip:The clear journaling spot sticker did not stand out enough against the blue and dotted papers so I simply placed the sticker on a piece of plain white paper then cut around the sticker. Adhere to the card using pop dots for more interest.

Monday, March 17, 2008

Sorry that the images from yesterday seemed to disappear. I have been having major internet issues and have not been able to access the blog or anything but email (and only that on occasion) for over a week now. Fortunately, I have some great friends here at CPS and things have been going as planned without me (no surprise there). Please help me send a HUGE thanks to Keri for keeping up with all of the posts for the last week. (Thanks Keri!!!) I am hoping to be back to normal (well as normal as I get) by later in the week. Hopefully you were able to get this week's sketch (hoping it is on the right...I can't see the blog LOL) and get started creating your masterpieces. I will try my best to get the rest of the gorgeous Spring themed cards made by the CPS designers up later in the week. Thanks to all of those who let us know of the missing images and hopefully they are appearing in yesterday's post now.

Saturday, March 15, 2008

Well it has been a wonderful week of great inspirations and creativity don't you think??This weeks Reader's Spotlight goes onto Danni! Charity was the lucky designer who got to pick this week and this is what she had to say!

Friday, March 14, 2008

Unfortunately due to some major internet issues Tami has not been able to keep up the CPS blog this week...and so it fell to me (Keri) to keep it up...well then my internet went out for two days...LOL So the final CPS#55 is FINALLY HERE!!! And I hope you agree, it was worth the wait! Enjoy!